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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28702053">Wretched Boy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusive_eventuality/pseuds/elusive_eventuality'>elusive_eventuality</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hades (Video Game 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Issues, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, aka Hades cares about Zagreus and Persephone bullies him until he admits it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:49:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,619</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28702053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusive_eventuality/pseuds/elusive_eventuality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Don’t I? He has felled me for the tenth time in a row. I am the ruler of this realm, the god of this house. It will not do for him to make me appear so…weak.” He spits the word between them, fingers curling into the palm of his hands and Persephone tuts, takes one of his large fists between her small, delicate hands; begins to rub the tension from his joints one by one. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“He is your son, Hades, no matter how much you may wish he wasn’t. He has your strength. And your stubbornness.” </i>
</p>
<p>Or</p>
<p>Persephone's return puts things back into perspective.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hades &amp; Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Hades/Persephone (Hades Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>263</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wretched Boy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I have...no explanation for this. After defeating Hades for the tenth time in a row, I couldn't help but think about the wounds inflicted to Hades' pride and this was born. I also love the idea of Hades having a softer side for Zagreus than he lets on, and that Persephone is the one to nurture that, as well as caring for Hades while his wounds heal.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Charon is as stoic as ever on the return. The boat is almost too small for Hades but it is the only alternative. To be seen being carried by the same river that escorts mortals and…lesser beings is a humiliation he isn’t sure he’s capable of recovering from. The very thought saps his pride as much as Zagreus’ arrows, the gashes across his body still weeping sluggishly, his strength only just starting to return as Charon takes them further from the surface and deeper into the earth, into his own realm.</p>
<p class="p1">Persephone’s garden is the only way to steal past the prying eyes of the shades. Charon takes him as far as he is able, leaves him to stagger towards the gates, the wall sliding up and open to reveal the path of brambles and thorns, overgrown, even now. Then again Persephone had always known how to hold a grudge. Had taken one look at the garden Hades had spent so long trying, futilely, to maintain and locked herself in their room for a week.</p>
<p class="p1">The blooms were only just starting to return. Shimmering red across the branches, winding down the stone walls to in a waterfall of colour. Its other entrance was sealed, cutting him from the rest of the house, affording him the smallest semblance of privacy in which to lick his wounds.</p>
<p class="p1">Zagreus is probably on his way back down by now, taken by the Styx. He never did last long up there. The sunlight burned him, Hades knew, sapped his strength like the poison in the temple.</p>
<p class="p1">Wretched boy.</p>
<p class="p1">“I thought I might find you here.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Yes, well, you have always found me predictable.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Our son has returned.” Persephone sits down beside him, drags her hand across his knee, her small fingers not able to cover the width of the joint. “He’s looking for you.”</p>
<p class="p1">Hades grunts, allows his eyes to close against the weariness in his bones. “Let him. That boy has been nothing but a nuisance, and I a fool for believing it would be something he would ever outgrow.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You don’t mean that,” Persephone admonishes, hard for all her softness, and lifts a hand to work through his hair, the dried blood flaking from the strands and to the cobbles below.</p>
<p class="p1">“Don’t I? He has felled me for the tenth time in a row. I am the ruler of this realm, the god of this house. It will not do for him to make me appear so…weak.” He spits the word between them, fingers curling into the palm of his hands and Persephone tuts, takes one of his large fists between her small, delicate hands; begins to rub the tension from his joints one by one.</p>
<p class="p1">“He is your son, Hades, no matter how much you may wish he wasn’t. He has your strength. And your stubbornness.”</p>
<p class="p1">Her hand trails up his arm, rubs gently across the slowly healing gashes, hums softly as she goes. The garden swirls to life around her, a plume of shimmering green and gold as her voice lifts, the leaves on the trees bending to listen, brushing across the crown of Hades’ head.</p>
<p class="p1">“You are proud of him,” she murmurs a minute later and Hades scoffs. “Do not deny it — you have never been able to hide anything from me. You burn with pride as much as you do embarrassment. It is a wondrous thing, is it not, for a father to see his heir grow so strong?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I have no heir. The fates themselves declared it so.”</p>
<p class="p1">“And yet there he stands — a mirror’s image that even you cannot look away from.”</p>
<p class="p1">“We are nothing alike.”</p>
<p class="p1">Persephone smiles, a small tilt of her lips. “No? Because I’ve heard from certain shades that he’s been practising with Varatha.”</p>
<p class="p1">Varatha…It had been centuries since Hades had heard that name. Longer still since he had wielded it. How strange it was now, to think of such a weapon in Zagreus’ hands.</p>
<p class="p1">“It is not something he has ever used in my presence.” Hades flexes his fingers, feels the bones mend back together, the skin stitch itself tightly across his knuckles. “Perhaps he is sparing me the pain of being felled by my own weapon.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Stop that,” Persephone snaps and smacks the side of his arm. It is a touch Hades scarcely feels. “He loves you, in his own way. He wants to make you proud of him. He has not used Varatha in your presence because he does not want to disappoint you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Instead he hides behind Coronacht. I did not raise a coward.”</p>
<p class="p1">“<em>You</em> did not raise him at all if what Nyx says is to be believed.”</p>
<p class="p1">Hades swallows at the venom in Persephone’s voice, turns his face away in shame. He has endured so much humiliation today. What is one more act of weakness?</p>
<p class="p1">“How could I? The boy looks so much like—“ <em>you</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">Hades remembers the absence of Persephone like one remembers a scar. Thinks back, achingly, to the silence in his life once she had left. Packed up and fled to the surface in the wake of such grief. Left Hades alone to raise a babe he believed dead, one the spitting image of the woman he mourned for, no less. It was not a conscious act, his temper for the boy, nor his dislike.</p>
<p class="p1">And despite it all Zagreus had grown strong, healthy, flourished under Achilles’ mentorship, under Nyx’s. In the quieter moments, when Hades stole away to his empty chambers to rest, away from bureaucracy and duty, he allowed himself to feel the stirrings of guilt. Remorse. Of watching the boy come into himself without Hades’ help, find his footing, his place, away from his father.</p>
<p class="p1">And then it had been too late. He had grown, for better or for worse, into the same stubborn wretch that brought Hades to his knees. That battled him just as ruthlessly with words as he did weaponry. So headstrong, even in defeat. So bitter in all his resentment.</p>
<p class="p1">“He does not hate you,” Persephone says and Hades stiffens, wonders just how it was that she always seemed to follow his thoughts, wherever they strayed. “He is conflicted. He resents the lies you have told him, but he does not resent <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p class="p1">“That is his error.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Even now you are still afraid to show him you care. He is your son, Hades. <em>Our</em> son. If you will not do it for him, then you will do it for me.”</p>
<p class="p1">“It is not that simple!” Hades snaps. “It is easier, this way.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Easier for you, yes.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Easier for all of us!”</p>
<p class="p1">The floor rumbles beneath their feet at the volume of his voice, the blooms retreating into themselves. Hades regrets it immediately, exhales heavily as his shoulders sag, as the tension drains out of him like blood from a wound.</p>
<p class="p1">“Do not raise your voice to me again, Hades. I am here out of choice, and I will just as easily decide to leave.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I apologise. My anger is not directed at you.”</p>
<p class="p1">Persephone looks at him for a moment, her gaze like that of a brand upon his temple until he concedes, meets her eyes with a composure he does not feel.</p>
<p class="p1">“Then it is directed at Zagreus?”</p>
<p class="p1">His hands tremble in his lap, tensed so tight the tendons in his wrist strain.</p>
<p class="p1">Curse her.</p>
<p class="p1">“No.”</p>
<p class="p1">The air shifts as Persephone does, the smell of fresh blossoms and earth and something Hades has never quite been able to place. Fates, how he had missed her. Her chin rests on the slope of his shoulder, legs tucked up beneath herself to provide her with the boost of height she requires and he slumps instinctively, curls into himself to ease the strain on her back.</p>
<p class="p1">“Yourself, then?” she whispers, trailing her fingers across his clavicle, up his neck, until she can cup the side of his jaw, drag the pad of her thumb across his cheek.</p>
<p class="p1">Hades does not answer. Persephone sighs, her breath gusting across his chest like spring’s gentle breeze.</p>
<p class="p1">“You did the best you were capable of at the time, Hades. Fates know you could have done more, but I see the pain raising him as brought you. I see love, too. Even if you cannot admit it to yourself, I know it is there. You have that same gleam in your eye as Nyx when she regards her children. For better or for worse he is yours. He is ours.”</p>
<p class="p1">He allows her fingers to turn his face, grazes his nose as carefully as he is able against her temple, presses a small, chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. She has not permitted his touch often. Not unless she herself initiates it first, and her boundaries have always been firm. Resolute.</p>
<p class="p1">But she allows it now. Sighs happily against him and allows him to gently lift her, place her in his lap, propped on a single large thigh.</p>
<p class="p1">“He is truly wielding Varatha?” Hades asks after a few minutes, content in the way her hands skim along his arms, the way her head rests beneath his chin.</p>
<p class="p1">“Quite well, too, if Achilles is to be believed.”</p>
<p class="p1">A surge of pride floods through Hades’ chest before he can press it down. Varatha had never been an easy weapon to wield, had taken Hades himself several decades to master. It is no small feat for Zagreus to achieve it by himself, much less without the stature of his father.</p>
<p class="p1">“He will never make it past Elysium,” Hades muses, and pictures, amusedly, the sight of Theseus chasing Zagreus with his spear. “But perhaps the champions can teach him a thing or two.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading. Please consider leaving a comment or kudos if you enjoyed &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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